


L is for Lockdown

by Jb (sg1jb)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-11 23:43:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2087484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sg1jb/pseuds/Jb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Behind the scenes glimpse at a medical lockdown. When the going gets tough,<br/>Janet Fraiser gets going.</p>
            </blockquote>





	L is for Lockdown

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the February 2014 Gen Fic Day Alphabet Soup  
> ( previously posted on Dreamwidth, in February )

 

  
  
  
  
It hadn't been until 2050 hours Saturday evening, almost four hours after SG-3's return – and one hour after they'd started showing signs of serious illness – that Janet abruptly realised there was a bigger problem afoot than she'd thought. When a tech from one of the labs on level twenty had wandered in asking for calamine lotion or the equivalent, one glance at the small reddened area on the man's neck had sent her heart into her throat and her hand to the telephone.   
  
Fortunately, Colonel Dixon was senior officer on duty for the night. Smarter and easier than most to deal with, he hadn't even bothered trying to convince her they should first take the time to double-check whether or not the man had been either directly or indirectly exposed to SG-3. He'd simply said, "Oh crap," followed by "Yeah, okay," and it was a done deal. Within five minutes, the base had been sealed off and the SGC ventilation system isolated from the rest of the mountain and the outside.   
  
She'd had no doubt as to the mode of transmission, and immediately ordered her staff into contamination gear and hoods. Judging from the small size and shallow penetration of the bites on SG-3 and the lab tech, she'd suspected the heavy suits were overkill but hadn't been about to assume anything until they found the vectors and got one of the little buggers under a magnifying glass. To which end, not fifteen minutes after her initial call to Dixon SG-3's bagged clothing and gear had been put under glass in the isolation lab, to be carefully examined.  
  
At 2110, Dixon had called her with a full head count. There were only forty-eight people on base in addition to her staff and the patients already in the infirmary – a reassuringly small number of potential victims when compared to what might have been had SG-3 returned on a bustling Monday morning, but at the same time indicative of a disturbingly inadequate amount of skilled help. Dixon had also confirmed that although the tech had traveled a bit during the time between arriving on base for his twelve hour night shift and subsequently showing up in the infirmary, he hadn't had contact with anyone who'd been in the vicinity of SG-3 or their belongings.   
  
That initial legwork done, by 2120 the corridors had been nailed down and everyone on base instructed to remain behind closed doors unless explicitly permitted otherwise. There were some things the human body couldn't be denied no matter the risk, though; the predictable, completely understandable requests from some of the civilian staff for said explicit permission had begun filtering in shortly after midnight. Equally as predictable was how most of the military contingent, even ten hours later, according to Dixon, hadn't done the same. Janet well knew a military man's bladder was no larger nor more capable of withstanding abuse than anyone else's. She'd made a mental note to add disinfection of private and public area sinks in the occupied locations to the post-lockdown protocol. She'd made sure to include the one in Daniel Jackson's office on the list; while not normally a victim of military discipline and pride, at times he could be more stubborn than everyone else put together.  
  
Establishment of the lockdown had been quick, efficient, and thorough. Even so, within hours of the first she had four more patients at her door, escorted to her by airmen protected by bright orange contamination suits.   
  
The two-man Facilities crew on duty had found a few culprits in the first place they'd checked, caught up in the hepa filters in the gateroom ventilation grids. They were insects, as she'd thought, but unfortunately they were the teeny-weeny-tiny flying kind, rather than the easier to locate scary-creepy-crawly sort. While they couldn't get past the filters into the ventilation system, it was bad news all the same – there was no telling how many of them had accompanied SG-3 through the 'gate and they'd had close to four hours to flit through hallways, inspect elevators, and catch rides on clothing and equipment before the base had been locked down.   
  
Four hours to possibly have escaped the SGC, and it was her fault. Her tenure here was just approaching three and a half years, and apparently she was already growing complacent.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Lying huddled under a blanket on her uncomfortable cot, unwilling to open her eyes even though she knew she wasn't going to fall back to sleep, Janet listened to her infirmary: to unhurried footsteps, muted conversations, the clink and rattle and rustle of care being given and received. To soft moans and grunts, evidence of discomfort she was increasingly unable to alleviate. There were twenty-one patients in various stages of illness crammed into the infirmary, filling the beds and spilling over onto camp cots and rescue stretchers imported from Stores, and although the lockdown wasn't even a full four days old the count of remaining medication, intravenous supplies, and linen was so low as to be laughable.  
  
Her mind and body still weighed down despite her nap, it wasn't until a chair leg scraped on the floor right next to her that she realised someone was sitting at her side. "Okay?" she mumbled, expecting it to be one of her slowly recovering patients. Probably Johnson; since the worst of his symptoms had begun to wane, the SG-3 member had chosen to deal with his unearned guilt by being particularly helpful and solicitous.   
  
"Oops. Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you."  
  
Her eyes snapped open. "What did you do?" she demanded, struggling against the blanket to sit up on the awkward cot. She quickly scanned Daniel Jackson's hands, face, and neck for the now familiar telltale of a bite but came up empty.  
  
"I didn't do anything. It must have snuck in with my take-out order." He pulled on the collar of his black tee, exposing an angry-looking swelling just under his left collarbone.   
  
The affected area was large enough to sharpen her gaze and send it right back to his face for a more thorough assessment. "That's not even remotely a fresh bite," she accused. Despite that the extent of the inflammation indicated he was a goodly number of hours past initial exposure, he didn't appear flushed with fever yet, so hopefully his would be just a mild case.  
  
"No," he freely admitted. "Noticed it just after getting my meal delivery, about ..." He couldn't hold back a wince as he shifted his weight in the chair, bringing his arm up to check his watch. "Gee. Time flies. About seven hours ago. The airman and I used the WD-40 before opening the door, but obviously one got inside anyway."  
  
That wasn't what she wanted to hear. She'd rather he'd done something stupid such as wandering blithely out in the hall unprotected, or leaving his office door open. While cleaning products, disinfectants, and the limited types of insecticide on hand hadn't fazed the little bugs, two days ago, at twenty-nine hours in, they'd discovered that sprayed cooking oil and mechanical lubricants had proven good aversives in the iso lab – the inadvertent tourists on SG-3's clothing and gear had cut and run at the smallest squirt into the air, and so far it'd been an effective way of enabling escorted bathroom breaks and the safe distribution of food. Regular spraying of the entrance to the infirmary and the corridor outside had also meant she and her staff could ditch the cumbersome contamination gear in favour of regular iso gowns and neoprene gloves. Hopefully the mishap with Daniel's office wouldn't be repeated here.   
  
"I found a bottle of Tylenol in the back of a filing cabinet drawer, so I figured I'd just stay put and not add to your load unless it got bad enough I couldn't handle it," Daniel told her. "But I wasn't thinking – it didn't occur to me until a bit ago that you could probably make good use of that bottle. I'm really sorry. I had no idea it was there, and I should have realised its value right when I found it ..." He shrugged, and his face paled. "Ow."  
  
Okay, so probably not just a mild case, then. Janet pried herself up and out, and despite Daniel's protests helped him off his chair and onto the cot. His skin was hot to the touch, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been, the worst of his fever apparently held back by the Tylenol he'd taken. "You've been checked over?" His answer was yes, indicated with a nod that heightened the tinge of nausea on his face.   
  
"Have you been filled in on what to expect?" This time the answer was no, so she quickly gave him a summary as she untied his boot laces. "You're already familiar with the start of it. The itch, erythema, and inflammation at the site of the bite shouldn't get any worse from this point on, and the headache should plateau soon. Your fever and nausea will worsen, though, and will be accompanied by joint and muscle pain of increasing severity as time goes on. Of course," she eyed him, "you're already pretty sore, aren't you?"  
  
Daniel didn't bother validating her assessment. Instead, he plucked at the front of his t-shirt and asked, "Do you have any scrubs, or even a gown I can trade for? I've been wearing the same clothes for over four days."  
  
Ah yes, that problem. There was no way to supplement the dwindling supply of clean linen; with no way to do laundry, anything soiled stayed that way. "Sorry, but we've only got a few gowns left," she told him. "And believe me, you'll need a clean one a lot more later than you do now."  
  
"Oh, I dunno about that," he mumbled under his breath, adding something indistinct that seemed to involve underwear, and then changed the subject. "Ran into Teal'c in the hallway on my way here," he told her. "He was calmly sitting on the floor holding a bowl of raw eggs, and surrounded by a wicked-looked beige halo." His lips twitched into something approaching a grin as he added, "I think he's enjoying himself."   
  
Janet had to smile. The discovery that Teal'c didn't get sick when bitten, and that biting him was instantly fatal to the tiny gnats, was a bright light in this dark tunnel. It gave them something to fight with, at least, while the two biologists who'd found themselves trapped on-base while working on a special project tried to figure out what to do about the bugs and how to do it. As the pale bugs were easily visible against Teal'c's skin colour, he'd been able to see the one that had landed on his hand and directly observe the immediate effects of its bite. Janet had worried about the cumulative effect of multiple bites on Teal'c's apparent immunity, until she'd gathered enough medical data to determine that SG-3, who each had been bitten numerous times off-world, were no worse off than her SGC patients.   
  
After days of debilitating illness, SG-3 and her earliest patients appeared to be on the road to recovery, symptomatically at least. And while there was no way to know if the virus, or whatever, transmitted by the gnats would result in residual health problems, lab tests run by the overworked biologists so far indicated humans probably weren't effective incubators of the infective agent. They'd confirm it later – once they figured out a safe way to get virologists, support staff, and much needed supplies into the SGC without risk of letting any of the gnats out – but so far it seemed likely this illness wasn't contagious. Qualitatively supporting that hope was that after three days of direct contact with infected patients, Janet and her staff hadn't fallen ill. Yet.  
  
Aided by the raw eggs that so instantly attracted the bugs, for the time being Teal'c was proving to be an effective biological exterminator, and she was glad to hear he was enjoying the job. However, he could only be in one place at a time and she wasn't all that comfortable with letting him carry on this way for much longer. How many of the little creatures were out there and how to most efficiently find them all was everyone's biggest concern: no matter what means of widespread eradication they might come up with, before any thought could be given to lifting the lockdown, the risk of any possible survivors escaping the base had to be quantified and eliminated.   
  
"Hey, Dixon." Daniel raised his voice, looking over at the man curled up in the bed opposite them. "How are you feeling?"  
  
"Jackson," Dixon drawled, not bothering to raise his head. "I'm pissed off. Thanks for asking." Dripping with sweat and his face creased with pain, all the same he still clutched his newly permanent appendage – a telephone handset.   
  
"He's just starting to come out the other side," Janet told Daniel. "He'll feel better by tomorrow." Not that he, or anyone else, ever should have become ill in the first place.   
  
The colonel had been on the phone during as much of his time as possible while in the infirmary, the exception having been the long peak period during which he'd been too sick to keep even a stray thought in his head. Janet knew Daniel would arrive there within the next four hours or so, and she also knew she didn't have nearly enough drugs left on the shelf to help him through it as she had Colonel Dixon and her other patients. The lockdown had unfortunately come at the lowest point in their supply cycle – but all the same, the speed with which the supplies on hand had been used up was her fault; she'd miscalculated the need.  
  
As perceptive as ever, Daniel lightly touched her arm. "You're not to blame for any of this, you know."  
  
No? He wasn't that obtuse, but she explained it anyway, if for no better reason than to get it out into the open. "SG-3 returned covered in bites not twenty minutes after they'd left, Daniel. We've been at this for years now; how difficult would it have been to have realised that whatever bit them that many times, so close to the Stargate, just might come on through along with them?"  
  
"You did what you could, as soon as you could," Daniel tried to soothe her, but turning green and gagging on bile in the middle of the reassurance sort of spoiled the effect he'd been going for. Janet lightly squeezed his hand in lieu of the compazine she didn't have, and got up to fetch an emesis basin for him.  
  
A hand grasped her sleeve as she moved past Colonel Dixon's bed with a cup of water and the basin. "They didn't show signs of being sick until hours later, Doc, and you're not the person who's primarily responsible for keeping track of what might come through the 'gate." He was interrupted by a tinny voice issuing from the phone in his other hand, and she tried to move off while he answered whoever it was, but he shook his head at her and wouldn't let go of her sleeve.  
  
An outright retch from the cot across the way had Johnson hurrying over to pluck the basin and water from her hands. She let him deliver them; there wasn't anything she could do for Daniel other than that anyway, and far be it from her to interfere with Johnson's insistent need for penance.   
  
"Let the general do the post-mortem later – right now we've got other things to talk about," Dixon said, waggling the phone at her. "Grab another handset and pull up a chair, because it looks like we just might have a plan."  
  
The conference call turned out to be with one of the on-base biologists plus a myriad of people on the outside, including a chemist whose name she missed, General Hammond, Colonel O'Neill, and someone in charge of supplies logistics. The conversation covered issues around the relative degrees of hazard inherent in the aerosol delivery of various oils and lubricant chemicals, and maintaining the integrity of airtight isolation tenting large enough to span the height and breadth of the level nine corridor on the NORAD side of the SGC main blast door. Needs were prioritised, and lists were compiled and confirmed, then re-compiled when the logistics guy had a fit over the impossible task he'd just been handed.   
  
Well over an hour later, after cautions from several people not to count unhatched chickens, the talking was done. She put down the phone, tucked in an exhausted Colonel Dixon, and retired to the bathroom to stand at the sink for however long it took her. When she finally came back out, her eyes were clear and her hands steady as she snagged one of the last two gowns from the pitifully depleted linen rack.  
  
The Tylenol had worn off completely; Daniel's eyes were glazed by fever as he eyed the gown in her hand. She tucked it under his pillow. "They have a plan," she softly told him as she dipped the edge of his blanket in the cup of water and used it to clean a thin trail of bile off his chin. They were all out of washcloths.  
  
"Oh, a plan." A bit of deep breathing let him get past a spike of nausea enough to add, "A plan is good. So when are we getting out of here?"  
  
"I have no idea. Probably not for a long while yet. But in six to eight hours, hopefully everything we need will be coming in."   
  
"Ah, that kind of plan." He twitched his head to indicate the gown she'd brought. "Maybe you should keep that, just in case it doesn't pan out."  
  
"It's a decent plan, Daniel. It'll be fine." Besides, the next six to eight hours would stretch out to eternity for him; he was in for a rough ride and there was nothing else she could do for him while he was still aware of it. "I'm pretty sure I heard you mutter something about vile underwear ..." she teased.  
  
A faint smile ghosted across his face. "Yeah, okay," he agreed, touching the edge of the gown where it poked out from under the pillow. "This is a good plan."  
  
Yes it is, she thought as she helped him up and turned him over to Johnson's tender mercies. As they made their way to the washroom so Daniel could change in privacy, she surveyed the crowded, unsanitary condition of her infirmary, and much to her own surprise was comfortable with the thought that another eight hours wasn't too long to handle.   
  
There was a plan, and considering the quality of all the people both waiting on and driving that plan forward, it was enough. Lockdown, schmockdown – they could handle it.  
  
  


* * *

* * *

 


End file.
